rkbabang

Careful Castanza, you might get banned for spreading hate against the residents of the Rocky Mountain states.

I would rather not be "governed" at all. The word "governed" is just a friendly euphemism for "forced to do what someone else wants you to do as they rob you."

This is why Democracy sucks as a way of making decisions. Be careful when you side with the masses as the "m" is usually silent.

I agree. The US birthrate isn't even at replacement levels and the Canadian birth rate is even lower. With out immigration, and a lot of it, both countries are screwed in the medium to long term.

I think, 4-6% is still pretty standard in New England depending on what the seller's Realtor offers to the buyer's agents.

It is unfortunate that no one has been able to do this yet. Back in the 90s when the web was new real estate was one of the things everyone thought would be just totally transformed by the internet. People thought Realtors and MLS listings would be soon obsolete and all the frictional costs of buying and selling property would disappear as online services of some type would do everything seamlessly for a fraction of the cost. None of this happened (at least not yet). Everyone still uses traditional Realtors and pays them as much as ever. Besides seeing pictures online of the property before viewing it in person, not much has changed. It turns out to be a more difficult problem than almost anyone suspected.

I was born in the early 1970s and never received the small pox vaccine. Most Americans under 50 have not received it either. https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/7004/ "Routine vaccination of the American public against smallpox stopped in 1972 after the disease was eradicated in the United States."

Do you know a Dr. Leo Marvin? No, I know Bob though.

I have a vacation home on Lake Winnipesaukee and have already spent 4 weeks there this summer and will spend Labor Day week there as well. Also going to Punta Cana for a week in October.

LOL Are you trying to equate Germans with Germs? Sorry, I'm going to go read that article now.

Maybe I don't hang out with enough snooty people, because I don't know anyone who claims to never eat at McDonald's because it is below them. Everyone knows that eating too much too often wouldn't be good, but McDonalds is pretty well loved as far as I can tell. EDIT: I wonder if this has to do with being in New England. We've really never had a regional fast food burger place like other parts of the country, i.e. whataburger, in-n-out burger, etc. We have Five Guys now, but that is fairly recent. I think it was less than 10 years ago the first time I tried it and they are still few and far between. For us fast food burger has always meant McDs, Wendys, or Burger King.

I've read all of Jared Diamond's books. They are always both entertaining and thought provoking. It's been a while since I read this so I don't remember the details, but I remember speeding through it as this being one of those books that are hard to put down. Not many non-fiction books are like that, he's an excellent writer. One of the authors who's books I'll buy as soon as they are published.

Yeah, but unlike Whataburger (and Sees Candy for that matter, which I've also never seen or tried), McDonalds is available where I live and almost everywhere else.

They've been in business a long time, so obviously someone disagrees with me. I've never been able to eat anything from that place. Not only do I find the food gross (I won't even mention the coffee, it isn't something I like to think about), but they always seem dirty inside to me.

Really? I think McDonalds's is quite good for what it is. Insanely consistent no matter where you are (at least in North America), you always know exactly what you are going to get. The coffee is good, the burgers are great for the speed and price and the fries are excellent. Wendy's is usually better for burgers, but their fries are no where near as good, and they aren't as fast. Burger King shouldn't even count as food. Five Guys doesn't have a drive through. .... McDonald's has been around for well over half a century and no one has even been able to copy them.

I was just searching for this thread to recommend this. My wife and I watched the whole season in two days. Excellent.

An excellent crypto wallet is Exodus (https://www.exodus.com). It is available for phones or computers. Create a wallet, then write down the seed phrase. You can then delete the app completely and restore the wallet using that seed phrase either into another Exodus install or any other wallet that uses 12 word seed phrases will also usually work as the algorithm is a standard. Once you have the wallet’s seed phrase written down or memorized, it is a good idea to delete the wallet app from your device so if you are ever hacked they can’t access your wallet. You can use your seed to re-create your wallet any time you need to. Everything you need to know about your 12-word secret recovery phrase https://support.exodus.com/article/925-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-secret-recovery-phrase#1824word

Thanks I’m going to check this out. My initial thought is that Network=good State=bad Networking people together is a good thing with powerful effects. Creating yet another coercive criminal organization to rob from them and pretend to protect them is probably not a good idea. The world has far too much statism as it is. I’ll withhold further comments until I read it though, I don’t want to judge a book completely by its cover.

Coinbase Pro is being discontinued and those features are all coming to Coinbase. But right now, you are correct. https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-to-shut-down-coinbase-pro-to-merge-trading-services

I’ve been using Coinbase to buy it, then once I have accumulated a larger amount than I am comfortable with them holding I move it to my own private wallets where I hold the private keys. There is a saying: Not your keys, not your crypto. If you are only going to buy small amounts, holding on Coinbase is probably relatively safe for the near future, I usually don’t move it until I have $5K or more in there, just realize that there is risk to doing that. Coinbase could get hacked, or go bankrupt tomorrow and you could lose your balance. A good exercise to learn about doing all this would be to buy a hundred dollars worth and practice moving it to a private wallet and then moving half to another private wallet, just so you get a feel for how it works. Print out the private key and then try restoring the wallet by typing in the key to a new device.

Exactly. Every market has people who don’t understand what they’re doing or what they are investing in and trying to get rich quick. These people are often hurt when the market turns. Crypto, being a new type of asset, is even more prone to this than more mature markets. It is what it is and it presents massive opportunities for people with more knowledge and patience.

Value investing isn’t a religion, it isn’t something you believe in. It is one tool among many.

Yup, it’s going to be a bloodbath. I’m loving it. My prediction is a huge sell off from here and over 50% of the shitcoins go to zero. Buy Bitcoin when everyone you talk to has sold, thinks it’s a scam, and is as pessimistic as everyone on this board is.

Praise be to Bob!

The question is worded wrong. The answer is clearly no with how it is worded. Many people have a lot of money which they didn’t create. People have inherited money, politicians and criminals have money stolen from others, etc… Does the amount of money a person earns/creates reflect their worth to society? Almost always, yes. And before someone gives a bunch of outlier examples, of course there are always exceptions to the rule.